Kaspersky expert reveals the group’s “GoldDragon cluster” targeting media, think-tanks in South Korea

8 September 2022

Nearly 10 years since Kaspersky experts unmasked an active cyberespionage campaign primarily targeting South Korean think-tanks, the state-sponsoredgroup dubbed as “Kimsuky” continues to show prolific updating of tools and tactics to victimise North Korea-related entities.

Kaspersky’s senior expert revealed more of his findings, including the possibility of this Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) threat actor expanding its operations with its abundant capabilities.

Kimsuky, also known as Thallium, Black Banshee and Velvet Chollima, has been in Kaspersky’s radar since 2013 and it is known to update its tools very quickly to hide its infrastructure and make it harder for security researchers and auto-analysis systems to acquire payloads.

Seongsu Park, Lead Security Researcher for Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky, found that the notorious group has continuously configured multi-stage command and control servers (C2) with various commercial hosting services located around the world.

A command and control server is a server that helps a threat actor control their malware and send malicious commands to its members, regulate spyware, send payload, and more.

“From less than 100 C2 servers in 2019, Kimsuky now has 603 malicious command centers as of July this year which clearly suggests that the threat actor is posed to launch more attacks, possibly beyond the Korean peninsula. Its history suggests that government agencies, diplomatic entities, media, and even cryptocurrency businesses in APAC should be on high alert against this stealthy threat,” says Park.

Kimsuky’s GoldDragon cluster

The skyrocketing number of C2 servers is part of Kimsuky’s continuous operations in APAC and beyond. In early 2022, Kaspersky’s team of experts observed another wave of attacks targeting journalists and diplomatic and academic entities in South Korea.

Dubbed as the “GoldDragon” cluster, the threat actor initiated the infection chain by sending a spearphishing email containing a macro-embedded Word document. Various examples of different Word documents used for this new attack were uncovered, each showing different decoy contents related to geopolitical issues in the Korean Peninsula.

Further analysis allowed Park to discover server-side scripts related to the GoldDragon cluster, which allowed the experts to map the group’s C2 operation.

1. The actor sends a spear-phishing email to the potential victim to download additional documents.
2. If the victim clicks the link, it results in a connection to the first stage C2 server, with an email address as parameter.
3. The first stage C2 server verifies the incoming email address parameter is an expected one and delivers the malicious document if it’s in the target list. The first stage script also forwards the victim’s IP address to the next stage server.
4. When the fetched document is opened, it connects to the second C2 server.
5. The corresponding script on the second C2 server checks the IP address forwarded from the first stage server to check if its an expected request from the same victim. Using this IP validation scheme, the actor verifies whether the incoming request is from the victim or not.
6. On top of that, the operator relies on several other processes to carefully deliver the next payload such as checking OS type and predefined user-agent strings.

Another notable technique Kimsuky utilises is the use of verification process of the client to confirm it’s relevant victim they want to compromise. Kaspersky experts even saw contents of decoy documents having various topics including the agenda of the “2022 Asian Leadership Conference”, a form of honorarium request, and an Australian diplomat’s curriculum vitae.

“We’ve seen that the Kimsuky group continuously evolves malware infection schemes and adopts novel techniques to hinder analysis. The difficulty in tracking this group is that it’s tough to acquire a full-infection chain. As we can see from this research, most recently, threat actors adopt victim verification methodology in their command and control servers. Despite the difficulty of getting server-side objects, if we analyze an attacker’s server and malware from the victim’s side, we can fully understand how the threat actors operate their infrastructure and what kind of techniques they employ,” adds Park.

To protect systems and networks from Kimsuky’s clandestine tactics and techniques, Kaspersky experts suggest:

• Full-context based defense is the key
  • Hit-and-run style defense never works
  • Security teams and experts need to understand the full-context of threats; it is advisable to have services that provide in-depth and real-time reports and analysis like Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal
  • Diversify defense points
• Cooperation with other industry
  • Each sector has different sets of strength and expertise
  • Cooperation is essential to understand multidimension of cyber threats in turn allowing better strategies against them

Read the full report on Kimsuky APT in Securelist.com.

Global cybersecurity company shares how to secure smartphones from “Anubis” mobile Trojan and the infamous “Roaming Mantis” campaign

5 September 2022

With the continued uptick in the adoption of mobile banking in Asia Pacific (APAC), global cybersecurity company Kaspersky warns of more attacks against Android and iOS devices. Particularly, active monitoring shows the notorious Anubis Trojan now delivers a combination of mobile banking Trojan with ransomware functionalities to its target smartphones.

Kaspersky elite researcher – Suguru Ishimaru – zeroed in on the mobile threat landscape in APAC to answer: what if there are no smartphones? Sharing the reality that users cannot live without a mobile device, he unmasks the latest malware targeting iOS and Android users in APAC during the company’s 8^th Cyber Security Weekend in Phuket, Thailand.

Mobile banking Trojans are one of the most dangerous species in the malware world. This type of threat steals money from mobile users’ bank accounts usually by disguising the Trojans as legitimate apps to lure people into installing the malware.

Anubis is a mobile banking Trojan targeting Android users as early as 2017. Its worldwide campaigns targeted users from Russia, Turkey, India, China, Colombia, France, Germany, the US, Denmark, and Vietnam.

This malware family continues to be one of the most common mobile bankers, according to Kaspersky’s latest mobile statistics in the second quarter of 2022. In this period, one in 10 (10.48%) of unique Kaspersky users globally who encountered a banking threat has encountered Anubis mobile banking Trojan.

Initial infections are done through multiple ways – legitimate-looking and high-ranking but malicious apps available on Google Play, smishing (phishing messages sent through SMS), and Bian malware, another mobile banking Trojan.

Once in, this infamous mobile banker can do a complete device takeover. It can steal personal information and identity, access private messages and login credentials, record sound, request GPS, disable play protect, lock the device’s screen, and more.

“Anubis is known for compromising hundreds of bank customers per campaign, proving that it’s among the most active malware targeting Android users right now. Our recent findings show that the cybercriminals behind this threat have started implementing ransom functionalities. If this modification proves to be successful, chances are other malicious groups will copy the same technique of stealing data and holding devices hostage. As a result, I expect to see more of such attacks in APAC due to cybercriminals’ strong financial motivation,” says Suguru Ishimaru, Senior Malware Researcher for Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky.

The threat against Android and iOS users: Roaming Mantis

Another prolific threat actor targeting mobile banking users, globally and in the APAC region, is Roaming Mantis. The group carries out malicious campaigns that target Android devices and spreads mobile malware initially via DNS hijacking and currently through smishing.

Kaspersky experts have been tracking its operations since 2018 and detected almost half a million attacks in APAC from 2021 to the first half of 2022. Most numbers of the malware were blocked from infecting Kaspersky users in Russia, Japan, South Korea, India, and China.

Ishimaru also underlined that while the cybercriminal group is known for targeting Android devices, Roaming Mantis’ recent campaign showed interest in iOS users.

Using the same techniques, the smishing messages targeting iOS users contain a very short description and a URL to a landing page. If a user clicks on the link and opens the landing page, there are two scenarios: iOS users are redirected to a phishing page imitating the official Apple website, while the Wroba malware is downloaded on Android devices.

If a victim inputs his credentials to the phishing website, it will then proceed to the 2FA (two-factor authentication) phishing website. This allows the attacker to know the user’s device, credentials, and 2FA codes.

“There is a notion that iOS is a more secure operating system. However, we must take two things into account – the increasing sophistication of mobile bankers’ social engineering techniques and malware arsenal and the possibility for human errors. Remember that both Anubis and Roaming Mantis require user’s participation before they can take over a device. With more than half (63%) of digital payments in APAC doing their financial transactions online through mobile devices, awareness is no longer enough. Protecting our smartphones is a step that everyone should be doing by now,” adds Ishimaru.

Kaspersky expert suggests two layers of protection for smartphones

• Basic security
  • Keep phones up-to-date and install the latest patches
  • Reboot daily
  • Do NOT trust third-party apps and mobileconfig
  • NEVER click on links sent through SMS
  • Install a security solution like Kaspersky Total Security
• Advanced protection
  • Use a VPN to mask your traffic
  • Check live network traffic using live Indicator of Compromise (IOCs)
  • Use Lockdown Mode for iOS 16 users